The present invention relates to a printing system and a print control method for controlling the operation of a printer.
In recent years, from the perspective of terrestrial environment protection, there have been strong demands for resource savings in printing paper, colorant, and other printing materials in the field of office work including the printing by printers. Some functions of printers can contribute to resource savings by reducing the number of sheets of printing paper used by the printers. One of the functions is a double-side printing function to print images on both sides of a sheet. Another of the functions is an aggregate printing function to print two or more shrunk images on one sheet.
In general, a color printer has a monochromatic printing function to print color images as monochromatic images. By printing less important color images by means of the monochromatic printing function, it is possible to reduce consumption of color ink, color toner or other colorant, thus contributing to resource savings.
A resource-saving processing function is to reduce the medium consumption (consumption of printing paper or toner) necessary for printing.
For example, each of JP-2008-22423-A, JP-2003-248576-A, and Japanese Patent No. 3,899,962 discloses an image forming apparatus or a peripheral device management system that makes it easy to set resource saving functions, which can contribute to resource savings. The resource saving functions may be a double-side printing function, an aggregate printing function, a monochromatic printing function, and a low-quality printing function.
The image forming apparatus disclosed by JP-2008-22423-A makes it possible to register in it a combination of printing functions as associated with a button on its display. The printing functions make it possible to reduce image forming costs, which are calculated based on the unit costs of each type of printing paper and each type of image formation. A user can set the combination of printing functions by clicking on the single button without setting them individually.
The peripheral device management system disclosed by JP-2003-248576-A calculates the reduction in the number of sheets of printing paper and/or the ratio of reduction in the number of sheets of printing paper per user and/or per device based on the difference between the actual number of sheets on which printing has been done (for example, double-side printing on one sheet counts as one sheet) and the number of sheets of printing paper as counted on the assumption that one-side printing has been done on each of the sheets (for example, double-side printing on one sheet counts as two sheets).
The image forming apparatus disclosed by Japanese Patent No. 3,899,962 does printing immediately if the actual printing function selected by a user is more effective in resource saving than a specified printing function. This apparatus prompts the user to reselect another printing function if the actual printing function is not more effective in resource saving than the specified printing function.
On the one hand, in order to meet demands for resource savings, it is necessary to make resource saving functions used positively. On the other hand, there may be cases where one or more resource saving functions cannot be used according to the importance or the like of image data files to be printed.
Every time the apparatus disclosed by JP-2008-22423-A or the system disclosed by JP-2003-248576-A does printing, the user needs to decide whether to use each of the resource saving functions. Therefore, the user may not use the resource saving functions.
The apparatus disclosed by Japanese Patent No. 3,899,962 forces the user to select a resource saving function, so that the user cannot select another function, which may be a one-side printing function or a color printing function.
An object of the present invention is to provide a printing system and a print control method that make a user select one or more resource saving functions of the printer of the system by preference.
Another object of the invention is to provide a printing system and a print control method that enable a user to select no resource saving function of the printer as occasion arises.